7 ms·

Yahoo's Fight for its Users Earns the Company Special Recognition by EFF

438 points by jasondemeuse 13y ago

yuhong 13y ago
Notice the name of the law used is mentioned in this article.
- s_q_b 13y ago
  Modern newspeak and equivalent English terms: Department of Homeland Security - Department of State Security Public Safety - Police Department of Defense - Department of War Enhanced interrogation techniques - Torture
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Public Safety includes way more than Police; there's the fire brigades, the emergency medical services, the DMV and more.
    - s_q_b 13y ago
      That's true, but to me lumping in the gendarme with firefighters and EMS is pretty Orwellian language engineering.
- cpeterso 13y ago
  Protect America Act?
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Yes, this is what I mean.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    How Orwellian of them. Does that law still exist, though? I thought they replaced it with the FISA Amendments Act or something.
    - yuhong 13y ago
      Yes, they did. I read an article about it before.
  - e3pi 13y ago
    You must know by now, all Fed op/act/project names must be read through rot180, or a `clapperSpeak' translator.
  - takluyver 13y ago
    US legislation often seems to have titles like that - 'America Invents Act' or 'Stop Online Piracy Act'. Legislation here in the UK has much more prosaic, factual titles, like the "Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill".
    - adestefan 13y ago
      So do US laws. If you actually read the Bill it usually has a factual and direct title and then the second line will be "Also known as the Bunnies Are Cute Act."
joshuak 13y ago
I have hated yahoo because of their poor products, bad user experience, ridiculous design sense, and what appears to be just brand marketing for a brand's sake. However, I have to say this news gives me a strong reason to reevaluate yahoo. And my own feelings about this makes it clear to me there is a market in customers who are interested in having their rights respected. I'm looking forward to the new wave of strong security, and corporate user rights policies as a feature.
- yuhong 13y ago
  I think Marissa has recently did a lot of changes to improve Yahoo.
  - finnw 13y ago
    She seems to be good at getting nerds talking about Yahoo. I don't think I was ever in the target market for any of their products, and I almost forgot the company existed, until the recent controversy about the ban on remote working.
    - deadreturns2 13y ago
      Uh what do you have against remote working that you're switching to Yahoo just cause they banned it?
      - angli 13y ago
        I understood that to mean he'd forgotten about the company until the remote-working ban controversy brought it back into the spotlight, not that he's boycotting Yahoo on the basis of its remote-working policy
        frogpelt 13y ago
        Actually he thought the opposite, that said user was switching to Yahoo! because they banned remote-working on the basis that said user does not approve of remote-working. But it is confusing.
e3pi 13y ago
"... While Yahoo still has a way to go in the other Who Has Your Back categories (and they remain the last major email carrier not using HTTPS encryption by default)..." Why? and how vulnerable to Eve, not using HTTPS?
- jethro_tell 13y ago
  This is what I'm so confused about. 6 years ago they realized they would need to protect their customers from prying eyes yet they couldn't wrap their heads around encryption being a major player in that system? I'm not buying it.
benatkin 13y ago
It seems like an odd choice to leave the exclamation point out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!
- untog 13y ago
  Ironically, the HN auto-linker doesn't pick up on it, either.
znowi 13y ago
Well, this is a little weird... Yahoo that joined PRISM in 2008 gets a gold star from EFF?
- umsm 13y ago
  I doubt you can "join" PRISM. You're forced in.
  - breakupapp 13y ago
    It definitely has a cool name though. Reminds me of Justice League.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    "forced in" meaning that in order to continue to conduct business as is without trying to circumvent in the name of their users interests, they chose to align their interests with the surveillance state in order to minimize any potential short term corporate hardships. It kind of reminds me of how a certain president received a nobel peace prize yet the actions conducted under his policies (or rule) are in contradiction to the ideals of what the prize is named after, but I digress. There is always a choice to be made…
    - herge 13y ago
      > potential short term corporate hardships You mean prison time, like what happened to Joseph Nacchio? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
      - cinquemb 13y ago
        Notice I did not say "potential short term individual hardships", regardless of what he was charged and convicted of (which wasn't failure to comply with NSA orders of which he says are in retaliation of)…
        13y ago
aniket_ray 13y ago
The complete tally for different companies is here: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013
- loginalready 13y ago
  I suppose the big empty space on the right is where "Respects users' privacy in their own business practices" should be. But of course this is only about the Big Bad Government. It's an interesting cultural difference how privacy suddenly becomes in issue in the US now that it's about the government, and totally fine when people were being tracked an profiled for profit.
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    There's a key difference. When it's the government, there's a chance a big black van will pull up next to you and haul you away for the rest of your life. A corp is likely just trying to manipulate you into buying their worthless junk. Not good, but at least you're not dead or imprisoned.
  - Tomis02 13y ago
    You're [dead], create a new account. I don't know why you're banned, your comments are mostly pertinent and not boring. Maybe the admins don't like Europeans ^^.
- hkmurakami 13y ago
  not surprsed to see dropbox rated so well. My friend used to work there, and even though they split over differences, he commended them for truly respecting user privacy and that it is one thing that dbox absolutely gets right.
  - psbp 13y ago
    Not to discredit them completely, but don't forget that dropbox was listed as "coming soon" in the PRISM slides.
diff_sky 13y ago
"Yahoo went to bat for its users – not because it had to, and not because of a possible PR benefit" Good for them, but also perhaps motivated from poor PR resulting from this episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_Chinese_dissidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_C...
- Amadou 13y ago
  Even if the incident with screwing over the chinese dissidents is the entire reason they fought the NSA in court that does not subtract one iota from the good karma they deserve for fighting the NSA in court. People who learn from their mistakes deserve at least as much praise as the ones who got it right from the beginning (the list of which seems to be exceptionally short in this case).
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- cinquemb 13y ago
  Good luck meeting your GDP numbers after that. It's ok, that is what the Federal Reserve is for[0]… ;) [0]: http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/BSTcombinedfinstmt2012.pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/BSTcombin...
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Because they know that google is very unlikely to simply shut up shop, the shareholders would probably never allow it for one. A company can always have it's CEO replaced with someone more amenable.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    In case of Google?
- chollida1 13y ago
  Well they start by putting all the C level exec's in jail for refusing a lawful request. I'm not sure how long Larry, Sergey, Steve and Marissa would want to stay in jail but I'm sure they'd have plenty of interesting discussions:)
timbrooke 13y ago
We are talking about the Yahoo that is one of the NSA partner companies, aren't we?
mythz 13y ago
Ironically the only major tech company not to deny NSA involvement, is seemingly doing the most for its users privacy. Fighting against the overreaching arm of the US Govt in secret courts for the last 6 years, without any potential for publicizing their plight exemplifies Yahoo's true stance on user privacy. Actions speak louder than words, what you do when no-one's watching, without any potential of direct benefits or exposure shows Yahoo's true colors. Which is in stark contrast against other major tech companies strategy of instead deny direct involvement, launch marketing campaigns promoting users privacy as their top priority and go as far as launching anti-privacy campaigns criticizing the privacy policies of their competitors, whilst simultaneously providing an indiscriminate fire-hose of private user data directly to the NSA.
jjp9999 13y ago
Only in 2005, Yahoo helped the Chinese regime prosecute a journalist. That wasn't the only time that happened, either. (Source: NYT - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-yahoo.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07i... )
- discardorama 13y ago
  I'm tired of this example. AFAIR, Yahoo got a valid court order to turn over information, and they complied because they had a presence there. No other company: not Google, not Microsoft, not AOL would have done anything different.
  - coryl 13y ago
    Twitter might have, if they had a presence. They had this sort of issue in France a while back didn't they?
- Volscio 13y ago
  Yahoo! responded to being put in this situation by, among other things, funding a fellowship at Georgetown (and Stanford I think) for a researcher and 2 students to study human rights issues and communications policy related to the internet: http://isd.georgetown.edu/programs/yahoofellow/ http://isd.georgetown.edu/programs/yahoofellow/
stdgy 13y ago
Companies should be commended for their efforts to fight these orders. However, let's not forget that Yahoo also handed over information to the Chinese government that led to the arrest and prolonged imprisonment of multiple people, and then tried to cover up their behavior by pretending they didn't know why the information was being requested. I suspect that the backlash from those actions may have led the company to appeal the FISC orders, fearing similar potential future liabilities. Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/11/yahoo-calls-withholding-of-info-on-chinese-arrests-a-misunderstanding/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/11/yahoo-calls-withh...
- neilk 13y ago
  I don't think that's how it works. Yahoo went all-in with China and has significant staff and hardware and user records located in Chinese jurisdiction. Once you make that initial mistake you're basically fucked when it comes to resisting the Chinese government, because they'll just throw your people in jail, or confiscate servers. In America there are appeals processes, so Yahoo could avail themselves of those. So Yahoo may well have had a consistent "fight for the users" policy, but were constrained differently in different jurisdictions.
tptacek 13y ago
Subhed: "The truth begins putting its pants on." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876108
- psbp 13y ago
  Except when Snowden actively denies these companies inability to avoid compliance. I'm not sure who to believe that this point. This whole thing is messier than cold war politics and it was probably orchestrated that way.
fakeer 13y ago
If only they can clean their Y!Mail and make messenger XMPP happy and can give other (clean) apps like Calendar/Taks/Notes (free or for a decent fee) etc. I can switch but somehow, I know this is not good, user friendliness wins over worry for my own privacy. May be because the intuitiveness of an app or the absence of it is sth I've to deal with daily. Or maybe not, it's just simple laziness and dangerous indifference.

438 points by jasondemeuse 13y ago

yuhong 13y ago

Notice the name of the law used is mentioned in this article.

s_q_b 13y ago
Modern newspeak and equivalent English terms: Department of Homeland Security - Department of State Security Public Safety - Police Department of Defense - Department of War Enhanced interrogation techniques - Torture
- icebraining 13y ago
  Public Safety includes way more than Police; there's the fire brigades, the emergency medical services, the DMV and more.
  - s_q_b 13y ago
    That's true, but to me lumping in the gendarme with firefighters and EMS is pretty Orwellian language engineering.
cpeterso 13y ago
Protect America Act?
- yuhong 13y ago
  Yes, this is what I mean.
- mtgx 13y ago
  How Orwellian of them. Does that law still exist, though? I thought they replaced it with the FISA Amendments Act or something.
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Yes, they did. I read an article about it before.
- e3pi 13y ago
  You must know by now, all Fed op/act/project names must be read through rot180, or a `clapperSpeak' translator.
- takluyver 13y ago
  US legislation often seems to have titles like that - 'America Invents Act' or 'Stop Online Piracy Act'. Legislation here in the UK has much more prosaic, factual titles, like the "Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill".
  - adestefan 13y ago
    So do US laws. If you actually read the Bill it usually has a factual and direct title and then the second line will be "Also known as the Bunnies Are Cute Act."

joshuak 13y ago

I have hated yahoo because of their poor products, bad user experience, ridiculous design sense, and what appears to be just brand marketing for a brand's sake. However, I have to say this news gives me a strong reason to reevaluate yahoo. And my own feelings about this makes it clear to me there is a market in customers who are interested in having their rights respected. I'm looking forward to the new wave of strong security, and corporate user rights policies as a feature.

yuhong 13y ago
I think Marissa has recently did a lot of changes to improve Yahoo.
- finnw 13y ago
  She seems to be good at getting nerds talking about Yahoo. I don't think I was ever in the target market for any of their products, and I almost forgot the company existed, until the recent controversy about the ban on remote working.
  - deadreturns2 13y ago
    Uh what do you have against remote working that you're switching to Yahoo just cause they banned it?
    - angli 13y ago
      I understood that to mean he'd forgotten about the company until the remote-working ban controversy brought it back into the spotlight, not that he's boycotting Yahoo on the basis of its remote-working policy
      - frogpelt 13y ago
        Actually he thought the opposite, that said user was switching to Yahoo! because they banned remote-working on the basis that said user does not approve of remote-working. But it is confusing.

e3pi 13y ago

"... While Yahoo still has a way to go in the other Who Has Your Back categories (and they remain the last major email carrier not using HTTPS encryption by default)..." Why? and how vulnerable to Eve, not using HTTPS?

jethro_tell 13y ago
This is what I'm so confused about. 6 years ago they realized they would need to protect their customers from prying eyes yet they couldn't wrap their heads around encryption being a major player in that system? I'm not buying it.

benatkin 13y ago

It seems like an odd choice to leave the exclamation point out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!

untog 13y ago
Ironically, the HN auto-linker doesn't pick up on it, either.

znowi 13y ago

Well, this is a little weird... Yahoo that joined PRISM in 2008 gets a gold star from EFF?

umsm 13y ago
I doubt you can "join" PRISM. You're forced in.
- breakupapp 13y ago
  It definitely has a cool name though. Reminds me of Justice League.
- cinquemb 13y ago
  "forced in" meaning that in order to continue to conduct business as is without trying to circumvent in the name of their users interests, they chose to align their interests with the surveillance state in order to minimize any potential short term corporate hardships. It kind of reminds me of how a certain president received a nobel peace prize yet the actions conducted under his policies (or rule) are in contradiction to the ideals of what the prize is named after, but I digress. There is always a choice to be made…
  - herge 13y ago
    > potential short term corporate hardships You mean prison time, like what happened to Joseph Nacchio? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Notice I did not say "potential short term individual hardships", regardless of what he was charged and convicted of (which wasn't failure to comply with NSA orders of which he says are in retaliation of)…
      - 13y ago

aniket_ray 13y ago

The complete tally for different companies is here: https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013 https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2013

loginalready 13y ago
I suppose the big empty space on the right is where "Respects users' privacy in their own business practices" should be. But of course this is only about the Big Bad Government. It's an interesting cultural difference how privacy suddenly becomes in issue in the US now that it's about the government, and totally fine when people were being tracked an profiled for profit.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  There's a key difference. When it's the government, there's a chance a big black van will pull up next to you and haul you away for the rest of your life. A corp is likely just trying to manipulate you into buying their worthless junk. Not good, but at least you're not dead or imprisoned.
- Tomis02 13y ago
  You're [dead], create a new account. I don't know why you're banned, your comments are mostly pertinent and not boring. Maybe the admins don't like Europeans ^^.
hkmurakami 13y ago
not surprsed to see dropbox rated so well. My friend used to work there, and even though they split over differences, he commended them for truly respecting user privacy and that it is one thing that dbox absolutely gets right.
- psbp 13y ago
  Not to discredit them completely, but don't forget that dropbox was listed as "coming soon" in the PRISM slides.

diff_sky 13y ago

"Yahoo went to bat for its users – not because it had to, and not because of a possible PR benefit" Good for them, but also perhaps motivated from poor PR resulting from this episode: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_Chinese_dissidents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Yahoo!#Outing_of_C...

Amadou 13y ago
Even if the incident with screwing over the chinese dissidents is the entire reason they fought the NSA in court that does not subtract one iota from the good karma they deserve for fighting the NSA in court. People who learn from their mistakes deserve at least as much praise as the ones who got it right from the beginning (the list of which seems to be exceptionally short in this case).

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

cinquemb 13y ago
Good luck meeting your GDP numbers after that. It's ok, that is what the Federal Reserve is for[0]… ;) [0]: http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/BSTcombinedfinstmt2012.pdf http://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/BSTcombin...
jiggy2011 13y ago
Because they know that google is very unlikely to simply shut up shop, the shareholders would probably never allow it for one. A company can always have it's CEO replaced with someone more amenable.
- yuhong 13y ago
  In case of Google?
chollida1 13y ago
Well they start by putting all the C level exec's in jail for refusing a lawful request. I'm not sure how long Larry, Sergey, Steve and Marissa would want to stay in jail but I'm sure they'd have plenty of interesting discussions:)

timbrooke 13y ago

We are talking about the Yahoo that is one of the NSA partner companies, aren't we?

mythz 13y ago

Ironically the only major tech company not to deny NSA involvement, is seemingly doing the most for its users privacy. Fighting against the overreaching arm of the US Govt in secret courts for the last 6 years, without any potential for publicizing their plight exemplifies Yahoo's true stance on user privacy. Actions speak louder than words, what you do when no-one's watching, without any potential of direct benefits or exposure shows Yahoo's true colors. Which is in stark contrast against other major tech companies strategy of instead deny direct involvement, launch marketing campaigns promoting users privacy as their top priority and go as far as launching anti-privacy campaigns criticizing the privacy policies of their competitors, whilst simultaneously providing an indiscriminate fire-hose of private user data directly to the NSA.

jjp9999 13y ago

Only in 2005, Yahoo helped the Chinese regime prosecute a journalist. That wasn't the only time that happened, either. (Source: NYT - http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07iht-yahoo.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/business/worldbusiness/07i... )

discardorama 13y ago
I'm tired of this example. AFAIR, Yahoo got a valid court order to turn over information, and they complied because they had a presence there. No other company: not Google, not Microsoft, not AOL would have done anything different.
- coryl 13y ago
  Twitter might have, if they had a presence. They had this sort of issue in France a while back didn't they?
Volscio 13y ago
Yahoo! responded to being put in this situation by, among other things, funding a fellowship at Georgetown (and Stanford I think) for a researcher and 2 students to study human rights issues and communications policy related to the internet: http://isd.georgetown.edu/programs/yahoofellow/ http://isd.georgetown.edu/programs/yahoofellow/

stdgy 13y ago

Companies should be commended for their efforts to fight these orders. However, let's not forget that Yahoo also handed over information to the Chinese government that led to the arrest and prolonged imprisonment of multiple people, and then tried to cover up their behavior by pretending they didn't know why the information was being requested. I suspect that the backlash from those actions may have led the company to appeal the FISC orders, fearing similar potential future liabilities. Source: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/11/yahoo-calls-withholding-of-info-on-chinese-arrests-a-misunderstanding/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/11/yahoo-calls-withh...

neilk 13y ago
I don't think that's how it works. Yahoo went all-in with China and has significant staff and hardware and user records located in Chinese jurisdiction. Once you make that initial mistake you're basically fucked when it comes to resisting the Chinese government, because they'll just throw your people in jail, or confiscate servers. In America there are appeals processes, so Yahoo could avail themselves of those. So Yahoo may well have had a consistent "fight for the users" policy, but were constrained differently in different jurisdictions.

tptacek 13y ago

Subhed: "The truth begins putting its pants on." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876108

psbp 13y ago
Except when Snowden actively denies these companies inability to avoid compliance. I'm not sure who to believe that this point. This whole thing is messier than cold war politics and it was probably orchestrated that way.

fakeer 13y ago

If only they can clean their Y!Mail and make messenger XMPP happy and can give other (clean) apps like Calendar/Taks/Notes (free or for a decent fee) etc. I can switch but somehow, I know this is not good, user friendliness wins over worry for my own privacy. May be because the intuitiveness of an app or the absence of it is sth I've to deal with daily. Or maybe not, it's just simple laziness and dangerous indifference.